Subject: Re: Does Netatalk allow printer accounting ...
From: Edan Idzerda (edan@mtu.edu)
Date: Tue Jun 24 1997 - 14:57:16 EDT
Stefan Bethke allegedly said:
> netatalk 1.4b2 (or any early version) can neither do print job accounting
> nor file copy protection.
Though, I personally wouldn't want netatalk to do print job accounting
or page counting (well, if it was there...) but I would like to have
the ability to *pretend* that I know which user was printing.
> Print job accounting is not easy to achieve. Although the Printer Access
> Protocol contains provisions for a "password", neither LaserWriter 7.x nor
> 8.x make any use of, nor do they provide any user authentication data.
No kidding, especially if you'd really like to hold people responsible
for pages printed. And while we're vaguely on the subject, has anyone
gotten any other printer driver besides LaserWriter 8 to print to a
netatalk 1.4b2 papd running under Solaris 2.5?
I think the workaround you mentioned concerning afpd
writing a utmp/wtmp is a good idea in general, as well.
I did some research into a platform-independent print accounting system
and came close to what I wanted, but not quite. We're currently using
a system called Jake, from Columbia University. I had to make some
changes in order to get it to run under Solaris 2, and I've made a
number of other changes. But you can get the original distribution
and more information from:
http://www.columbia.edu/~denmark/resnet96/
Jake requires using an access terminal for each of your limited-access
queues. The user selects their job from a menu and then they
authenticate themselves on the spot. It's just about the only
system that really reduces your security down to the security of their
password. As long as you only have jobs going to a single queue,
you can get pretty darn reliable page counts.
I also looked at
http://www.maclaser.com/
http://deathstar.stanford.edu/macauth.html
http://info.utas.edu.au/docs/utas/utas88/Cost.Recovery.html
http://tarzan.trincoll.edu/printing/pprfaq.html
The Stanford one was one of my favorites, but it was essentially Mac
only (and cost money). Hope this saves somebody some beating on
a search engine.
- edan
-- Edan Idzerda <edan@mtu.edu> System Administrator -- Michigan Technological University, Houghton MI
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